In Progress » PK40 Fledermaus

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07.15.05 » Concepts
and Source Materials

So next on the to-do list is the
Fledermaus from the Nitto Maschinen Krieger line.
A friend of mine Fulcy is going to eventually
do his Fledermaus in a bare metal finish. Eventually…
perhaps a decade from now. LOL! After he mentioned
it to me I had a hard time picturing it. After
a while though the idea started to grow on me
so I worked up a scheme and asked him if he’d
mind me doing mine in a bare metal as well since
I didn’t wanna just outright take his idea. He
didn’t mind as his will be VERY different from
what I’m doing.

My Fledermaus will have a dull almost
flat aluminum feel to it with minimum shine. I
want it to have an overused/undercleaned look
about it. This will be an interesting challenge
though as bare metal seems to be something difficult
to pull off in a nice way. I think weathering
it in the typical Maschinen Krieger style will
help in that respect. Bare metal will show off
every flaw while the weathing will help hide them.
Here’s a picture of my intended scheme:

I found some great tutorials on
bare metal detailing that I’ll be using as reference.
Here’s the links:

All of those were chock-full of
great information and I highly recommend reading
them.

07.15.05 » What the
Fledermaus!?

I got started on the kit and as
usual there were plenty of parts fit issues. That’s
not so bad usually, but when you couple that with
instructions that are missing pieces, air-vents
that you can see into the hollow innards of the
aircraft through, seams down the middle of very
detailed boosters, and parts that just could not
possibly be intended to fit where they’re supposed
to according to the manual, you’re in for a challenging
build.

The first thing that was screwey
was the two halves of the cockpit. These were
slightly warped (at least I hope they were warped
and not actually produced this way) and didn’t
go together very well. Thankfully the nose helped
guide them into position, but there’s still some
shift to deal with when the canopy is in place.

The next issue was the intakes on
the sides of the cockpit. These were completely
non-detailed and left huge openings to see into
the crafts body. To seal these up I cut some “V’s”
from styrene and glued them together to make something
resembling a sliding intake cover. I’ve seen pictures
of similar things on real aircraft. When I glue
on the top half of the body, these will be bent
forward, pushed back, and glued to close up the
gaps. In the first image below you can see how
it is bent, but not pushed back into position
thus leaving a small triangular gap. In the second
image you can see where I added styrene to close
up some HUGE gaps in the intake that would be
visible after adding my intake covers.


Next is the seat and inside of the
cockpit. This will actually fit after everything
is painted so I can add it afterwards and not
worry about masking it. Sadly it’s pretty underdetailed
and has a goofy piston thing sticking into the
back of the headrest. I’ll be skipping that piece
and detailing up behind and around the seat to
look more like an ejection seat. I’ll also be
adding more details to the cockpit, instrument
panel, and making some fixed-pose hinges for the
canopy to keep it in an open position. I may even
split the canopy into two opening halves. Front
and back.

Next is the burner nozzels. Big
and pretty, but they’ll need a lot of work. All
5 of them have seams running right down the center.
This can’t be helped though as it’s a trade-off
between detail and ease of finishing. The nozzels
have 2 halves and one “fan” insert apiece.

Finally for this update is the supports
for the front landing skid. In the red circled
area you can see a peg that is supposed to magically
bend into that large hole. Never gonna happen.
So I’ll be doing so modifications there to make
it look natural and like it belongs there.

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